#10
I'd take these overly hormonal little beasts more seriously if they would at least saw SOMETHING about the treatment of women by our favorite groups in Pakistain, Afghanistan, and of course down in Tahir Square, home of those lovely boys in the Moslem Brotherhood...

Since none of these feminist groups EVER criticize anything except Christianity and the US, they have no credibility with me at all.

And you forgot the chanting of incoherent irrational slogans coming from the Loon's mouth.

[MAGHAREBIA] A year before the presidential elections, several heavyweights have disappeared from the Algerian political stage.

The Algerian political scene bereft of its big names is akin to an "elephants' graveyard", Liberté commented.

"For twenty years now, this mammoths' tomb has swallowed up the beautiful flower of Algeria's political future, which must now be consigned to the past, of course," the February 3rd editorial said.

"From Sifi to Belkhadem, Redha Malek, Taleb El-Ibrahimi, Benbitour, Hamdani, Hamrouche, Benflis, Boukrouh, Sadi, Ait Ahmed, Ouyahia and Soltani have all played their part in keeping politics going before this was crushed by indifference," the Algerian daily opined.

A popular adage says that when the National Liberation Front (FLN) catches a cold, Algerian politics sneezes. Indeed, the changes have been coning at breakneck speed.

The January departure of FLN party chief Abdelaziz Belkhadem is just the latest in a series of changes to Algeria's political landscape.

Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) head Said Sadi also stepped down last spring to make way for Mohcine Belabbas, the former leader of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS).

Political parties including the National Democratic Rally (RND), the Movement for a Peaceful Society (MSP) and the FFS also recently experienced changes in their leadership.

El Watan suggested that the "political killing" of the leaders of the FLN and RND was possibly part of a plan to make way for surprise replacements.

"The crisis that the FLN has gone through of late and the way in which the party's secretary general, Abdelaziz Belkhadem -- who was known for his loyalty to the president, to whom he owed his career -- was removed could indicate the lack of a consensus at the very top with regard to the 2014 presidential elections," the Algerian daily editorialised.

The only prominent political group that has enjoyed relative stability is the Workers' Party (PT) led by Louiza Hanoune.

In an interview with Magharebia, MP Ramdane Taazibt said his party was not affected because "the bylaws and internal regulations are adhered to within the PT".

In September 2008, the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) called out three high-ranking officials in the Hugo Chavez regime for supporting the drug-trafficking activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a narco-terrorist organization. Their assistance to FARC included: supplying the group with weapons and ammunition, granting Venezuelan citizenship to group members, preventing law enforcement from interfering with the groups drug-trafficking operations, protecting a wanted Colombian terrorist in Venezuela, allowing the group to use Venezuelan territory for drug-trafficking and terrorist activities, and even partnering in drug trafficking. In other words, these men are guilty of violating international law several times over.

The three senior officials named were: Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, at the time the director of Venezuelas Military Intelligence Directorate (DGIM); Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva, at the time the director of Venezuelas Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP); and Ramon Emilio Rodriguez-Chacín, who was acting as Venezuelas minister of interior and justice.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that in 2009 Venezuela was the main cocaine transit country in the Western Hemisphere. Today, Venezuela remains as relevant as ever in the cocaine-supply chain. So what became of the three OFAC-designated kingpins mentioned above? Were they questioned, investigated, or dismissed after OFACs announcement?

Not at all. In Bolivarian Venezuela, loyalty to the dying caudillo is all that matters, and the three kingpins and Chavez have a history. All three are members of the military; all three participated in the coup détat led by Chavez in February 1992; all three were arrested and did time in jail as a consequence; all three were promoted within the military ranks and to important governmental roles once Chavez reached Venezuelas presidency; and all three have been supported publicly by Chavez since OFACs announcement. So instead of demoting or dismissing them, Chavez gave them his full support and more power. Rangel-Silva was appointed as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rodriguez-Chacín was designated as Venezuelas representative in multilateral talks with FARC. And Carvajal was kept in command of military intelligence.

[An Nahar] A Kyrgyz military court on Tuesday sentenced in absentia former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev to 24 years in prison and his brother Janysh to life for crimes committed while they ruled the country from 2005-2010.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was toppled in a bloody 2010 uprising fueled by his family's rampant corruption, was convicted of abuse of power by the Bishkek military garrison court.

His brother Janysh, the former head of the state bodyguard service under Bakiyev, was meanwhile convicted of multiple murder.

Both men fled to Belarus after the 2010 revolution and Minsk has so far refused requests from Bishkek's new rulers to extradite the pair.

#3
I was listening to a local radio jock on the way homw who was talking about Champs speech. I about spilled my coffee when he referred to POTUS as that idiot in the WH. I just wonder why more people don't have his awareness.

[An Nahar] Fifteen Kurds have been enjuggedYez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in southwestern La Belle France in an anti-terror probe into extortion rackets used to raise funds for the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), legal sources said Tuesday.

The people arrested in the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... are suspected of being senior figures within the regional structure of the organization, the sources said.

The arrests came as German federal prosecutors on Tuesday pressed charges against a 46-year-old Turkish man suspected of raising money for the PKK throughout Europe.

The PKK, which took up arms in its campaign for autonomy in southeast Turkey in 1984, is branded a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies. More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have in the conflict.

Three Kurdish women activists were rubbed out in Gay Paree last month. The driver of one of the women has been charged with their murder.

#4
Sometimes we look at a photograph and we know something just doesn't look right, but we just can't seem to put our finger on what is wrong with the image.

In this case we know instantly that the image was "Photoshopped" because the plane and the background (the mountain) were photographed from two different perspectives. Or angles.

In photography perspective means - where was the photographer standing in relation to the subject when he/she took the picture ? In the Iranian Photoshopped image you will notice that, in the case of the background, the photographer was high above the mountain, and from the photographers perspective, he/she was in a position directly in front of the mountain. (head on)

In the case of the jet plane, if you look at the two tail sections, you will notice that the photographers perspective (position) was slightly above the plane and almost all the way to the left.

The image looks phoney because from the photographers perspective the plane would have been flying out of the image, or on the far right, not on the far left.

If you place the plane on the far right of the image, the first thing you notice is that the plane has no exaust. That is probably why the "Photoshop Artist" put the plane on the left and cut off the tail section.

Another dead give away that an image has been "Phoshopped" is the image resolution. Resolution is the size and shape of the pixels. In this case, not only are the two images different resolutions, but the plane has been given a "motion blur" which causes the planes pixels to become rectangular and pointed on the left.

AS A SIDE NOTE:

The image of Obama's birth certificate (on his website) is comprised of four different sized pixels.
It is quite easy to program Photoshop to copy only the pixels of a certain size.
If you do this four times what you come up with is the four original documents used to composite the final image.
Also the ink on each document is a different color of black. In addition all the text edits made are a fifth color of black. If you program Photoshop to copy only the fifth color of black, what you come up with are all the text edits they made on the final draft of the birth certificate.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.